Linda Evangelista Looks Like Ronald McDonald

Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Martha Stewart, Eminem...

How do you get Linda Evangelista to dress like a clown? If
you’re downtown designers Michael and Hushi, you produce
a line inspired by Evangelista and Ronald McDonald, then for months after
showing the line, you stalk the supermodel at every possible fashion shoot.
In September, the first model to strut down the Michael and Hushi catwalk
during their spring 2003 show wore a yellow-and-red leather ensemble and a
wig reminiscent of Evangelista’s famed short bright-red hair, which
became her signature do in the early nineties. The model also had an uncanny
physical resemblance to the supermodel. Since then, whenever stylists have
called the fashion house for clothes for an Evangelista shoot, the designers
have sent along the outfit and begged stylists to let Evangelista know that
she was part of their inspiration (along with Ronald, of course). Various
stylists pulled the outfit for her, including Patti Wilson for Italian
Vogue, Joe Zee for W, and Jason Farrer for V, but
Farrer finally got her to put on the gimmicky getup when Steven
Meisel shot her for the current Italian Vogue. Evangelista
stopped short of donning the bright-red wig but accessorized the outfit with
a gold Chanel necklace.

Ben Affleck Is Heading South

Ben Affleck’s getting close to owning a slice of southern
comfort. As we first reported last year, the actor’s been
house-hunting in Savannah, Georgia, since he fell for the area five years
ago while filming Forces of Nature with Sandra Bullock (she
bought a $3.8 million beachfront compound there in 2001). Sources say
Affleck and fiancée J.Lo were spotted brunching in the area a
few weeks ago, just around the time when Affleck is rumored to have made an
offer to buy a $3.45 million house on East Gordon Street. “It’s
Charlestonian,” says broker B. Moody of Cora Bett Thomas
Realty, who’s shown the four-bedroom home. “It has a guest house
and beautiful side gardens.” But Affleck may have some competition
from John Mellencamp, who checked out the estate himself after a
recommendation from his friend, the photographer Bruce Weber. Two
years ago, the singer almost bought the nearby Mercer House, the brick
mansion showcased in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which
was listed at $8.5 million but has since been pulled off the market.
Affleck, meanwhile, owns a Tribeca loft and a three-story Hollywood Hills
home that he briefly put on the market in 2001 for $2.3 million.

Eminem Plays Football

Ever since Eminem made his big-screen debut in the
semi-autobiographical 8 Mile, he’s insisted he doesn’t
know what his next acting project will be. He’s gone so far as to say
he may never do another movie. However, a well-placed source tells us that
he already has a project in the works at Imagine Entertainment with 8
Mile producer Brian Grazer. Eminem wants to star in the movie
adaptation of Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream,
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist H. G. Bissinger’s 1990
best-seller about the overzealous world of high-school football in Odessa,
Texas. Imagine has had the rights to the book for four years; Imagine
president Michael Rosenberg insists that while Grazer and his team
talk to Eminem “all the time,” they have not had any specific
conversations about Friday Night Lights: “We’ve had a
couple of scripts that haven’t worked out, but no one is attached
right now.” Eminem's rep, however, says Imagine has approached him
about the movie, but no decisions have been made.

Dude, Where’s My Ex-Girlfriend?

Top billing in Seriously Dude, Where’s My Car? isn’t the
only thing young Hollywood hunks Ashton Kutcher and Seann William
Scott have shared. We hear Scott recently had a fling with January
Jones, whom Kutcher had dated for three years. Scott and Jones,
we’re told, hooked up soon after shooting began on American
Wedding, the third installment of the American Pie franchise, in
which they play love interests. The real-life romance, however, was
short-lived. The ten-week shoot doesn’t end until sometime this week,
but they’ve already called it quits. “Somehow,” our source
adds, “the cast and crew never found out about it.”
Scott’s rep says the two never dated. Jones’s rep didn’t
comment.

Martha Stewart: Staying Put?

Is Martha Stewart thinking about hanging on to her pad in the
Richard Meier building on Perry Street? A source reports that
Stewart’s daughter, Alexis, and architect Walter Chatham
have made several visits to the place in the past few weeks. Buzz has it
that Alexis will take up residence in the tony buildingwhere Nicole
Kidman and Calvin Klein also own apartments. The domestic diva
put the place on the market for $8 million in August, shortly after the
ImClone insider-trading scandal exploded, but brokers say she pulled it off
the market about six weeks ago. Stewart bought the unfinished condo, which
she hired Chatham to design, in 2000 for just over $6 million. Maybe Stewart
wants to focus more on sprucing up her Bedford, New York, home. We hear
she’s ordered a ton of cabinetry from Long Island’s Reilly
WoodWorks, but owner Michael Reilly would say only,
“She’s been a real sweetheart to me.” Stewart’s rep
declined to comment.

Eric Fischl: Better Late Than Never

Eric Fischl’s new show was slated for March 8 to April 26 at
Boone’s Chelsea gallerybut it’s just going up this week.
Fischl, whose sculpture of a woman plunging to her death from the World
Trade Center was yanked from Rockefeller Center last fall amid public
outcry, says the new exhibit is delayed but not canceled. The holdup:
He’s been busy working on a large project for a German museum, part of
which will be featured in the Boone show. “I’m not as far along
as I hoped I would be,” Fischl says. “I felt very insecure about
showing the work.” How did Boone react? “She was taken
aback,” the artist admits. “This was the first time I had ever
postponed anything in twenty years. We’re still on good terms.
It’s just one of those things where the creative stuff isn’t in
sync exactly with the commercial side of the business.” Boone chalks
up the delay to the artistic process. “We opted for maintaining a
creative standard rather than keeping to the schedule, at the artist’s
wishes,” says Boone, who picked up Fischl’s paintings last
Friday. Unfortunately, Fischl didn’t alert all his friends that the
opening was delayed, and plenty showed up for the “opening”
after receiving invites. “There’s been awkward moments,”
concedes Fischl. “It’s embarrassing.”

MTV’s Real (Estate) World

MTV’s Real World first invaded New York when the reality show
debuted from a Soho loft in 1992. A few years later, another Real
World cast and crew were camped out in the Village. Now the music
network is hitting the Village again, for Sean “P. Diddy”
Combs’s reality show, Making the Band 2 (shooting started
last week). Sources say that MTV recently rented two adjoining townhouses
and a carriage house on Charles Street, near Seventh Avenue, for a whopping
$40,000 a month. The 8,000-square-foot space features six bedrooms, two
libraries, four terraces, nine fireplaces, and 54 windows. The townhouses
were up for sale by the owner, real-estate developer Daniel Kohs, and
he had two offers close to the asking price of $9.85 million, but he opted
to go with MTV. Broker James Lansill of the Sunshine Group declined
to comment.

Kirstie Alley’s Makeup Job

If Kirstie Alley’s acting career doesn’t pick up, she may
want to consider leaving Hollywood for a department-store makeup counter.
During a recent flight from Atlanta to L.A., Alley was approached by a
makeup artist who said she was a big fan and that she’d love to do her
face someday. Alley was flattered but then turned things around. The makeup
artist wound up getting glammed up by Alley, right on the spot. By the end
of the flight, Alley had done several other passengers, including Rebecca
Colefashionista Robert Verdi’s co-host on the
Discovery Channel’s Surprise by Designiand some of the
flight attendants. One passenger who took a pass on Alley’s offer was
Sheryl Crow, who slept through most of the flight. When the
peace-preaching rocker woke up, however, she did accept a gift from
Verdia T-shirt designed for him by Noir, emblazoned with the decree
MAKE FASHION NOT WAR.

Club Acts

Fresh off a jail stint, besieged club king Peter Gatien is trying to
get back in the nightlife scene. His daughter, Jennifer, a
screenwriter, tells us she’s teaming up with her dad to throw a huge
party in the spring to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Club USA.
“We sent someone down to Miami for the Winter Music Conference to talk
to D.J.’s,” she says, mentioning Danny Tenaglia and
Junior Vasquez as potential headliners for the 4,000-person
fête. “We’re looking for D.J.’s who have a personal
liking for my dad and what he did for New York nightlife to do it as a
personal favor.” Meanwhile, Pangaea owner Michael Ault is
opening a new downtown club next fall called Nocturne. “It will be a
wacky dream world, kind of Gothic,” says Ault, whojust signed a lease
for a 5,000-square-foot space in the Village.

ALMOST FAMOUS: We hear Disney has optioned the movie rights to
Über–magazine writers Karen Robinovitz and Melissa de
la Cruz,’s still-to-be-published book, How to Become Famous in
Two Weeks or Less, in a deal that could bring the authors up to
$400,000. The book, set to hit stores in July, stems from their Marie
Claire article last year in which the two competed to see who could
become more famous in just two weeks.